


Apocalypse Whoa

by Miss_M



Category: The Breakfast Club (1985)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Cozy Catastrophe, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, M/M, Mention of harm to children, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Sexual Content, Yuletide Treat, mention of harm to animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-22 14:57:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17061914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: “Brian, do I look mad?”“I don’t know.”“Open your eyes, doofus.”





	Apocalypse Whoa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coricomile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coricomile/gifts).



> I own nothing.

Squealing tires and metallic impact sounded much louder than before, when they would have had to compete with traffic noise, kids screaming and talking, police sirens. In the thick silence interrupted only by bird calls and the roar of the odd distant fire, the minor car crash in the high-school parking lot went off like a bomb.

Bender glanced out of the window, making sure he couldn’t be seen from outside. After a moment, he stepped fully in front of the window for a better look. 

A maroon Chrysler was frenching a dried-up fire hydrant, while Brian Johnson, wearing his winter coat in June and carrying a full-to-bursting backpack, stepped out from behind the wheel and gaped up at the school building. He scanned the rows of windows and passed over Bender, clearly outlined in the library window, twice before focusing on him at last.

Bender considered baring his teeth and making a slashing motion across his throat to get Brian to leave. In his experience, survivors tended to mean trouble. 

He raised his arm and waved to Brian. 

Brian shut his gaping mouth and waved back, then skedaddled for the side entrance when Bender gestured he’d meet him there.

“Thank God you’re alive. I figured other kids might shelter in the school. Have you been here long?” Brian was panting like he’d run all the way to school instead of driving his parents’ car.

“Hello to you too,” Bender replied, leading the way down the trash-strewn hallway to the library. “A few days.”

He’d stayed in a hospital first, but he knew the lay of the land better at school and was not above grimly appreciating the irony of his situation. He’d been sleeping on the bed in the nurse’s office, raiding the cafeteria, and using the materials in shop to make an array of knives, spears, and other stabbing implements. One night, a group of kids Bender didn’t recognize had broken in and trashed the place, but they hadn’t thought to check the air vents for survivors.

The library was full of torn-up paper and broken furniture. Bender saw Brian look around and avoid looking at him. 

“I didn’t wreck the place,” he said, but he could tell Brian didn’t believe him.

“Where are your parents?” Brian sounded so hopeful for good news about Bender’s family, it was almost funny.

“My old man’s dead. Only took him a day to die, the useless bum. The other one split.”

“Oh.” Brian looked like he’d offer Bender his condolences, except he was remembering what Bender’s parents had been like.

Bender clicked his tongue. “Yeah, she’s probably dead too by now. What about you? Parents decomposing in the master bedroom?”

“Yeah.” 

Well shit, Bender hadn’t meant to get it _that_ right. Brian looked like he might cry, like he’d cried a lot lately. 

“My sister ran away with some of her friends,” Brian offered. “She took her archery set with her.”

Bender started to tell him his sweet little baby sister and her girl-scout troop were either dead or chained up in some weirdo’s basement. “Maybe she’s alright, then,” he said instead.

Brian wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Yeah.”

Bender pulled up the only intact chair in the library and sprawled in it. Brian remained standing. He hadn’t taken off his coat or even put down his backpack.

“What’s your game plan, brain?” Bender asked. “‘Cause I gotta tell you, this school is getting a little old for me. Yeah, I think I’ve squeezed all the juice from what little it had to offer.” He spread his arms wide, legs crossed at the ankles. “So if you have an idea for where to migrate to, I’m all ears.”

Brian visibly snapped to. “I do have an idea. My uncle has… had a vacation cabin in Indiana, near the lakeshore. It’s pretty isolated, but there’s a dirt road off the highway and a town a couple of miles away. There’s a pond and a freshwater stream, a generator, a big supply of firewood, everything.”

Bender grinned. “Well that sounds just swell, Brian. What’s to stop me from beating the location out of you and just going there alone? See, I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a lot better at this whole survival thing than you are.”

Brian turned red as a tomato. “Oh, oh yeah? Do you know the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms, or what berries are safe to eat? Can you make a campfire, or put one out so you don’t start a forest fire? Did you even know that you can use sand and charcoal to filter water so it’s safe to drink?”

“I do now, genius.” 

Brian scoffed. “You wouldn’t know how to do it. I’m an Eagle Scout. I know loads of useful stuff.”

Brainiacs, man – always showing off. “Uh huh, and you can make spaghetti too, I remember. Then what do you need me for, since you’re all set to rebuild civilization on your own?”

Brian’s face paled again. “I don’t want to be alone. Most of the adults are dead, and I haven’t seen any kids that didn’t scare me.” He looked Bender in the eye. “I know you. You’re a little scary, but you don’t scare me.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot.” Bender put only minimal bite into the insult. 

A brief silence descended on the library, matched by the bigger silence outside. 

“Um,” Brian said. 

“What?”

“Did I mention that my uncle was a ham-radio enthusiast, and he had one set up in his cabin?”

Bender gave Brian a hard look and stood up so fast he knocked over his chair. Brian flinched but didn’t run.

Bender jabbed his forefinger at Brian’s breastbone. “I should kick the crap out of you, burying the lead like that! Let me get my stuff and find a car to steal. How far away is this place anyway?” 

Bender was moving around the library, gathering food, bottled water, weapons, and Brian followed close on his heels, like he was still worried that Bender would leave him behind. 

“About two hours’ drive,” Brian babbled. “Maybe less, if we don’t run into any trouble on the road. Wait, is… is Claire here?” 

Bender stopped and looked back at Brian, whose eyes were darting all over the library, like he expected Claire to pop out from the ransacked stacks and give him a big cheerleader smile. 

“Why the fuck would she be here?”

“Well, I mean, weren’t you and she together?”

“Me and Princess Daisy? Nah, not anymore. I heard she left the country with her mom when this plague shit started.”

“Oh.” Brian looked like it honestly hadn’t occurred to him a girl like Claire would have better options than holing up in an educational institution with Bender, of all people. “I’m sorry?”

Bender shrugged, stuffed a handful of energy bars into his backpack. “It’s fine. Sweets saved herself, good for her. Anyway, she got what she wanted from me, namely a way to drive her mommy and daddy nuts for a while, and I got what I wanted too.”

Brian was smart enough to guess what the answer would be, but he couldn’t resist taking the bait. “What was that?”

“Virgin pussy, what do you think? Tight, sweet as candy, and easy to impress.”

Brian started to speak, stopped, turned red again, and wandered over to the window. Bender knew the view outside very well and was sick of it: wrecked cars, trash everywhere, torn-up yearbooks flapping in the breeze. 

“Not much pussy around now,” Brian said quietly, staring outside. “Not even the kind that likes cream.”

Bender zipped up his backpack and clapped Brian on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, kid. Keep fumbling for the funny bone.”

 

*

 

Brian’s dearly departed uncle’s cabin had enough beds to sleep six people, which meant that Bender and Brian just moved to different beds when the sheets really started to smell. Eventually Brian insisted they had to do laundry, and Bender called him a fag but helped him wring bedsheets dry down by the pond anyway. That night, while drying sheets hung from the low branches of nearby trees, they slept in sleeping bags on the floor by the camp stove, and Bender hardly gave the logistics a thought before he choked his bishop inside his snug sleeping bag, with Brian snoring not three feet away. The sleeping bags would be handy come winter, as would the firewood stacked outside under the eaves, just as Brian had promised.

About once a week, give or take a few days – keeping precise track of time quickly proved absurd – they snuck to the nearby deserted town at night and raided the partly looted convenience store and the gas station for canned goods, chips, Wonder Bread, and peanut butter. They hid their stolen car under a pile of dead tree branches, and while Brian kept fiddling with the ham radio from time to time, other tasks filled the long summer days. 

They did what they could to weatherproof the cabin before the weather turned, went berry picking, debated ways of concealing the smoke from the woodstove and the campfire, but they also spent a lot of time sleeping, jacking off (always out of each other’s sight or hearing, Brian insisted on that, because Brian was a pussy), swimming in the pond, and climbing trees. In high summer, getting in touch with other survivors just didn’t seem all that urgent. One never knew what might happen with strangers, and spending days on end with only Brian Johnson for company didn’t irritate Bender half as much as he’d thought it would.

While Bender’s old man was alive, his idea of father-son time mostly involved sending Bender out for cigarettes and using him for target practice with empty beer cans. Leave it to Brian to have picked up useful life skills from his old man, like tying a variety of complicated knots or making a campfire.

Or fishing. Bender’s parody of Johnson family life had been even more dead-on than he’d assumed.

“It rained last night, we should find plenty of earthworms for bait,” Brian declared, brandishing his uncle’s fishing poles one morning.

Bender hawked a loogie and spat it out of the open window. “What a crock.”

“Look,” Brian said, “we are almost out of spam and canned sardines. We need animal protein. Unless you’re volunteering to hunt wildlife with one of your spears?”

“You’re animal protein, birdbrain,” Bender snapped. “Maybe I’ll eat you.” 

Still, the prospect of fresh fish for dinner didn’t sound half bad, not that Bender had ever had any – frozen fish sticks and those canned sardines were as close to aquatic life as he’d ever got. Anyway, if they caught nothing, he could give Brian endless crap over it.

A short while later, they stood shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the stream and watched a fish about the length of Bender’s hand prancing in the rain-soaked grass. 

“We have to gut it, scrape off the scales, then we can fry it or make fish stew,” Brian explained.

“And you know how to do all that, right, champ?”

Brian looked embarrassed. “Not really. My dad usually cleaned the fish we caught. My mom cooked. Anyway, I think this would make a very small stew.”

“Maybe we should just eat it raw.”

Brian smiled. “Sushi.”

“Yeah, with some of this grass instead of seaweed.” Bender screwed his eyes shut and stuck his tongue way out, gagging loudly. 

Brian laughed. In spite of himself, Bender laughed too. 

“We’d still have to clean it,” Brian pointed out. 

After another moment of staring at the fish, which now lay still at their feet, Bender sighed, bent down, and picked it up by the tail. He pulled out his pocket knife and flicked it open. “I’ll get to work on the scales,” he said, heading into the cabin. “You dig up some more worms. Maybe you can make your folks proud for once.”

“Hey!” Brian protested, but Bender didn’t look back.

In the end, they caught three fish, stuck them onto twigs Bender had stripped of bark – he held a fish in one hand, a twig in the other, and moved the twig back and forth through the fish’s mouth and the hole he’d slit under its tail, while Brian called him gross and tried not to laugh – carbonized them over the campfire, and ate them off of toasted slices of Wonder Bread instead of plates.

“That was the best meal I’ve ever had,” Brian declared, licking his fingers. 

“Yeah, it wasn’t half bad.” Bender emerged from the darkness with a dripping-wet six-pack of beer under his arm. “Here, Joyce Chen, let’s wash it down with a couple of cool ones, courtesy of your uncle’s stream and Smith’s Market in Bumfuck, Indiana.” 

“Oh. Um. I…” Brian looked like a deer in the headlights.

“Do not fucking tell me you’ve never had a beer,” Bender taunted.

“No! I’ve had beer! I’ve had beer loads of times.” He sounded as convincing as when he’d bragged about all the Niagara Falls chicks he’d banged. 

“Uh huh.” Bender tossed him a can. “Race you.” 

Two and a half cans of Coors Light later, Bender was having something resembling a fun time. Not that he’d have admitted as much to Brian, or that Brian was in any state to appreciate it. The kid was alternately laughing and trying to tell Bender very complicated and boring stories from his life before the plague, or maybe from books he’d read. He gesticulated wildly and lost his balance more than once. 

Bender caught him when he nearly pitched forward onto his face, and half sat, half laid Brian down in the grass. “Easy there, champ.”

“‘Champ’, that’s funny,” Brian giggle-slurred, trying to push himself upright. “You think you’re so bad. You think you’re some big tough guy, but I know.” He waggled his forefinger in Bender’s face. “I know what you’re really like.”

Bender shook his head. He’d give Brian so much shit for this when he sobered up. “Oh yeah? Go on, then, what am I like? Astonish me.”

Bender was sitting, and Brian was still half lying on the ground. Brian stared up into his eyes, looking completely sober, but then he reached for Bender’s arm and missed it. On the second try, he managed to snag the end of Bender’s sleeve and pull it up, revealing Bender’s veined forearm and round burn scar, the reason he wore long sleeves even in the middle of summer. 

Brian was leaning over him, pressing up against Bender’s side. “A little tough, not a tough guy,” Brian muttered to Bender’s arm. Then he kissed Bender’s scar.

Bender felt simultaneously frozen through and rubber-band tense, like he’d snap in half if he made any kind of move. Brian’s lips were wet on the rough skin of the scar, and Brian’s warm breath tickled the inside of his elbow, where the pulse point was. Brian nuzzled his arm for a moment longer, then Bender grabbed his shoulder and pushed him away. Not roughly, not so he’d hurt the kid. Just _away_. 

Brian flopped backward into the grass, arms flung out wide, and stared up at the night sky. “I feel so great,” he said and closed his eyes. 

Bender watched him till he was certain Brian had fallen asleep. Then he rolled down his sleeve and sat watching the campfire, cupping the inside of his elbow in his other hand. 

In the morning, Brian said little and made eye contact even less. Bender wasn’t feeling much like a big confrontation, so he kept his back turned to Brian and grunted whenever silence wasn’t an option but speaking wasn’t strictly necessary. 

By midmorning, after they’d checked their rabbit traps and patrolled the edges of Brian’s uncle’s property looking for signs of two-legged intruders, Brian either screwed up his courage or couldn’t stand the silence anymore. Either way, his eyes were red-rimmed and his hands shook when he came up to Bender outside the cabin.

“Look, I don’t remember anything from last night, okay?” Brian said. “I’ve never had beer before…”

“I noticed,” Bender said, more to himself than to Brian, who didn’t so much as pause.

“… and so I don’t remember anything. Not a thing I did or didn’t do! Okay? John? Please don’t make me leave. Please, please don’t…”

Bender frowned and took a step closer, getting into Brian’s personal space. “Whoa! You think I’d kick you out of your own cabin? What the hell?” He grabbed Brian by the arms and shook him to stop him babbling. “ _Brian!_ Brian, I wasn’t drunk last night.”

“Wh… What?”

“I said I wasn’t drunk. Unlike you, I’ve had plenty of beer in my short but eventful life, and I am telling you: I was not drunk, and I remember everything. Alright?”

Brian sniffled, and Bender let go of his arms so Brian could wipe his nose. “I… I lied. I remember it too.”

Bender could have ragged on Brian so much for that admission, but he found he didn’t want to. 

“No shit, you lied,” he said, wiped Brian’s wet cheek with the palm of his hand, then leaned all the way into Brian’s space and kissed Brian on the mouth.

It was not unlike kissing a girl: smooth skin, smooth lips. A wet tongue touching his tongue was always nice, the salty tears in his mouth were fine, even the bump of nose on cheekbone was fine. Bender snuck a peek: Brian’s eyes were closed. 

Bender licked his lips when they parted, took a deep breath, and exhaled. “You’ll definitely remember that, cherry.”

“So you’re not mad at me?” Brian still sounded like a little kid after a scolding.

“Do I look mad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Open your eyes, doofus.” 

Brian did. He blinked in the sunshine and focused on Bender’s face three-odd inches away from his own. 

“Do I look mad?” Bender repeated. 

“Well, you always look _a little_ mad.” He was trying and failing to hide a smile, the little shit. 

Bender rocked back on his heels and, before Brian could react, grabbed him in a headlock, still not roughly. 

“I don’t believe this,” Bender complained while Brian tried in vain to get away. “The world ended and everyone died, and I’m stuck in a cabin in bumfuck nowhere with the most insecure kid from Shermer High.”

Brian made a high, indignant noise, both hands pushing at Bender’s arm wrapped around his neck, and Bender let him go. 

Brian retreated a step or two and stood panting. “Don’t call me ‘kid’ anymore. We’re kissing now, and I’m only four months younger than you.”

“In terms of life experience, you’re about four months old, period. And we are not kissing. We kissed, simple past tense. If we’re kissing, present progressive, you better get with the program, pal, ‘cause I’m not doing everything around here.” 

Brian looked more indignant than ever. “How do you even know about tenses?”

Bender scoffed. “You’re a fucking snob, Johnson. Just because I didn’t care to get good grades, doesn’t mean I’m some know-nothing. And as for other things I know, just remember that your stupid elephant lamp didn’t work.” He clicked his tongue and looked pointedly at Brian’s crotch. “When I pull on your trunk, all the lights’re gonna come on.”

 

*

 

His taunt ended up being both more and less prophetic than Bender had intended. 

He figured out pretty quickly that, as eager as Brian was to try stuff, he would never take the lead when he was sober. He blushed and practically tripped over his own tongue the day they washed in the pond and Bender started jacking off then told Brian to give his dick a tug. But once Brian got his hands on Bender’s meat, Bender thought he might need insect repellent if he was ever gonna get Brian off him. The kid shot his load as soon as Bender reciprocated the tug, but he kept jacking Bender off till Bender started to hurt and told him to stop stop _stop now_. Only then did Brian let go, whispering an amazed ‘oh wow’ at the sight of Bender’s spunk splattered across his narrow chest. 

Well, if Brian needed to be goaded into trying stuff he liked, that was just fine. John Bender never met a challenge he couldn’t head-butt into submission. 

It was another warm day, and while Bender used to think camping was for dickheads – he still thought that even now that he was living like Jeremiah Johnson – he had to admit there was something about getting off out in the wild, under a wide open sky, that pumped his ‘nads big time. 

Brian’s skin was dotted with water from swimming in the pond. He looked nervous above the waist and just plain horny below the waist. 

“Er, what’re you gonna do?” he asked. 

Bender looked up at him from under his long hair. He considered vamping it up, just to fuck with Brian, but settled on a scoff instead. 

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out if you put your mind to it, brainiac,” he said and refocused on the pink dick and blonde pubes in front of him. 

Bender experienced a stab of nervous hesitation – it just made him more determined not to back down. 

He stuck out his tongue and licked under and over. Okay, that was new, as was the unexpectedly deep noise that came out of Brian’s throat when Bender repeated the experiment. He would have quipped that Brian’s voice had finally broken, but Brian’s moaning was getting to him in ways he didn’t want to try to put into words. So he opened his mouth and took some in, bobbing his head like he’d seen the girls do in pornos, only he had to do it more slowly. Being a faggot was more physically challenging than he’d realized.

The noise Brian was making – a low, sweet roar, like a well-oiled car engine turning over – more than made up for the effort. Goddamn, Bender felt it in his balls. He massaged his crotch, more aware than ever before in his life of how the different parts of his mouth worked together. Lips, teeth ( _no teeth, not good, he knew this_ ), tongue, kissing muscles, lower jaw, palate, back of throat. Brian grabbed hold of his hair, and Bender nearly shoved him away, but Brian wasn’t hurting him. Gentle Brian was gently pulling Bender’s hair while enjoying his first blowjob, and anyway, Bender didn’t run from a dare once begun. 

He kept sucking. Then he was determined that he’d get sucked – he gripped his crotch tight, he couldn’t wait to stuff his junk into Brian’s kisser – and everyone would get some animal protein. Winners all around. 

 

*

 

Summer became fall, trees began to shed leaves, mornings and evenings turned cold even while days remained honey-warm, and the nonperishables at Smith’s Market began to run very low. It was just as well that Brian had finally managed to reach a group of survivors on a farm about a hundred miles southwest. They sounded friendly enough, but still Bender whispered to Brian not to reveal their location or that there were only two of them straight away. 

“We need a cool call-name for the next time they call us,” Bender said while they lounged in the grass in the fall sunshine. “‘Two guys in a cabin in the woods’ makes us sound…”

He trailed off, and right on cue, Brian got that deer in the headlights look that irritated Bender at least as much as it made him want to yank Brian’s chain, just to see it again. 

“What?” Brian asked nervously. 

Bender arched his eyebrows. “ _You know._ ” 

“No, I don’t. I don’t get what you…” Brian squirmed where he sat, like the entire school cafeteria was witnessing this exchange. “You think ‘two guys in a cabin in the woods’ makes us sound like fags?” 

“No, genius, it makes us sound Canadian.”

Brian rolled his eyes and punched Bender on the shoulder. 

“Hey, watch it,” Bender said, batting Brian’s hand away, but Brian was too used to his ways to cower. 

“Do you remember when we met? That Saturday in detention?” Brian asked, looking bright and excited about whatever idea was percolating in his noggin. 

“What, you wanna call us ‘the brain and the criminal’? ‘The delinquent and the walrus’? I said a cool name.”

A slow smile grew on Brian’s face. “No, no. I was thinking ‘the brain and his boyfriend’.”

Bender found himself with a dilemma on his hands: whether to tackle Brian to the ground and rub dirt in his hair, or tackle him to the ground and dry-hump him till Brian came in his pants. One would take only fractionally longer than the other.

After a second’s calculation during which he clocked that Brian looked as much full of anticipation as he did ready to flee, Bender took a swipe at him, fast enough that the threat looked real but slow enough that Brian could duck and take off running toward the pond. He was laughing, his arms and legs pumping, his skinny ass right in Bender’s line of sight. 

Now that they were sucking and tugging each other on a regular basis, Bender caught himself thinking about Brian’s ass a lot. 

He scrambled up and gave chase. Good thing they were heading for the pond, he might just tackle Brian into the water, get their clothes washed into the bargain.

Either way, Bender was due for some payback.


End file.
